THE DECK: A regular deck of 52 cards (13 per suit) is used. The cards rank in ascending order: 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-J-Q-K-A The order of the suits in biddingis: clubs (low), diamonds, hearts, spades, no-trump (high) During play, the led suit is the highest except for the trump suit (if any). THE DEAL: Each participant will receive 13 cards, either through Automatic Deal- ing or Card Selection. AUTOMATIC: The first 26 cards are dealt alternately to each participant with the second 26 cards not used. SELECTION: Each participant will re- ceive 2 cards. He will look at the first card and either accept or rejectthat card. If he accepts it, the othercard is discarded unseen. If the firstcard is rejected, it is discarded and the participant receives the second. This continues until each participant has the necessary 13 cards. TRICKS: A trick is one card from each participant during the play. For example, the first player plays a cardand the other responds with his card. There are 13 tricks in each "hand". THE TRUMP: In each game, one of the suits may be declared as "trump". Any card from the trump suit is of a higher value than any card from the other suits. For example, a 3 in the trump suit is worth more than a KING in any other suit. It is possible to have "no-trump"selected instead of one of the four suits. In this instance, the led suit has the highest value. THE BID: Alternating the start of the bid-ding, each participant can bid for theright to name the suit to be "trump". The bidding always starts at a pre-setvalue and represent the number of points the winner of the bid MUST take by the end of the hand. Both meldpoints and card counts will be com- bined to achieve these points. The bidding will stop when one side "passes" making the last bidder (non-passer) the owner of the bid. At that time, the top bidder must select the trump suit. The side taking the bid MUST havea marriage (K-Q) or a deece (9) in thesuit to be named as trump. Failing to have a suit with either of these will cause the winning bidder to go "set". If at the end of the hand the winner of the bid does not have enoughpoints through both the meld and the card count to reach or surpass the amount of the bid, he will go "set". Note that at the very beginning of the bidding session, it is possiblefor the player who should start the bid to immediately pass and thus "drop" the bid on the opponent. THE PLAY: The starting bidder begins the play by leading any card except Spades(which cannot be led until they have been "broken" by a spade response on a previous trick, unless that is the only suit left in the hand). The otherplayer must respond in the same suit if possible. The winner of the trick is the one who played the higher card in the led suit OR the higher spade (which istrump). The winner of the trick is the one who leads out on the next trick. Note that no one is FORCED to take a trick. THE SCORE: If the participant wins at least as many tricks as he bid, he receives 10 points for each bid trick and 1 point for each additional trick. If, for example, the player bid and took 4 tricks, he receives 40 points. If he bid 4 but took 6, he receives 42 points. If the participant fails to take the bid amount of tricks, he goes "set" and will lose 10 points per bid. For example, if he bid 4 and onlytook 3, he went "set" and loses 40 points. THE GAME: The game is over when a player has a score higher than the pre-set game limit. Should both players have scores above the game limit, the one with the higher score is the winner. ÿ